and Stephen L. Frazier has granted permission to NFN's
Web Services to modify and use its information for posting on this site.
Any comments should be addressed to IPCA Brief Tutorial for Using Netscape 4.x Composer
Netscape's Composer is an easy-to-use, "What You See Is What You Get"
HTML document creation program which is tightly integrated with the other components of
Netscape's Communicator. It makes creating HTML documents for email, newsgroups and
the Web a simple process. A lot of the features of the Netscape 3.x Gold were
improved upon in this new Netscape version. Before starting this tutorial it is
recommended that you download the latest Netscape version (4.5) from here. This document was originally prepared by the Eastern Connecticut State University and Stephen L. Frazier has granted permission to NFN's
Web Services to modify and use its information for posting on this site.
Any comments should be addressed to IPC
Composer's features include the ability to:
This document is presented as one page for ease of viewing and printing. It might be useful to print this document out for reference as you step through the actual program use.
You can quickly jump to a section of the document that you are interested in by selecting one of the topics below:
Composer, the HTML editor that comes bundled with Netscape's
Communicator, can be started in one of several ways. To begin editing a blank page,
run the Navigator (the Web browser) and locate the 
bar in the lower, right-hand corner of the
screen. Click on the 
icon. This brings up a blank page in the editor.
| Another way to start the Composer is to use the pull-down menu. Click on the File pull-down menu (top, left-hand corner), select New and choose from one of three options listed below. |  |
Incidently, using the Page From Wizard option is a great way to start a
simple, basic page. Follow the instructions provided carefully. After creating
the page, you can then view the HTML source (and edit it further if desired).
To add text to the page, position the cursor at the desired point, click and begin
typing. Highlighted text (drag your cursor or double-click words) can be deleted
(press the Delete key on the keyboard) or moved by clicking on it and not releasing the
mouse button while dragging (moving the cursor to the new location). You can also cut,
copy and paste text by right-clicking on the highlighted text (or using the Edit
pull-down menu at the top of the window). If you are copying text directly from a
Navigator window (the Web browser) to the Composer window, please note that it will not
retain formatting (unless you temporarily edit the browser's page).
Highlighted text can be
bolded, italicized or underlined by selecting one of these buttons located at the top of
the screen. Alternatively, these formats can be applied to highlighted text by
clicking on the Format pull-down menu and selecting the appropriate Style.
Hint: Paragraph markers can be displayed (or hidden) by clicking on
the View pull-down menu and selecting Show Paragraph Marks.
Heading 1: Largest text size
|
JustificationBy highlighting text and then clicking on the alignment button (as illustrated in the picture on the right), text can be justified as follows:
|
|
The color of
text which has been highlighted (by dragging the cursor across it while holding the mouse
button down) can be changed either by clicking on this button (located near the top of the
Composer window) or right-clicking on the highlighted text and selecting Character
Properties. In either case, the Character Properties window will be brought
up. Click on the color box (usually black initially) next to Use Color
and select the appropriate color setting.
You can drag-and-drop a wide variety of objects to create a link in the page that you are editing. Dragging-and-dropping offers the following options:
icon into the Composer window.
(image is saved in same directory as the
HTML page you are creating or editing).Alternatively, you can add links by using the Insert pull-down menu at the top of the Composer window.
Targets allow the page (whether inside the same document or a linked document) to be repositioned when the user clicks on a link. For example, a table of contents at the top of a document can be composed of a set of links. If the user clicks on one of those links, the document will quickly be repositioned to the appropriate part that the user is interested in reading.
A target is a "name tags" that is inserted into the document. After inserting
a target, a 
icon will appear at the point of insertion. If you right-click on the target icon
and select Target Properties, you can determine the name that the target was assigned.
Images can be easily inserted by pressing the 
button or by clicking on the Insert pull-down menu and selecting
Image (depicted below).
 |
Press the Image button to insert an image... or click the Insert pull-down menu and select Image (depicted in the image at the left). |
Right-click on the image (that you previously inserted) and select Image
Properties to control justification and the alignment of text associated with the
image. Note that you will not see the effect until you press the 
followed by
the 
button.
This text
illustrates the effect that this button has... to associate this format with the image,
right-click on the image and select the Image Properties option.
This text illustrates the
effect that this button has... to associate this format with the image, right-click on the
image and select the Image Properties option.
This text
illustrates the effect that this button has... to associate this format with the image,
right-click on the image and select the Image Properties option.
Using Images as Page Backgrounds
Images can be used as Web page backgrounds. Excercise judgement when selecting an image,
however. The image should be as small as possible (Netscape will tile the image repeatedly
to fill the Web page background) and should not distract from the wording of the page
(i.e., the background
image should not be too wild!).
There are several sources of free background images on the Web. Just search the web for
"free background images" or use one of the sites listed below (listed in no
particular order nor endorsed but provided as a quick resource).
http://www.wildcreek.com/backgrounds2.htm
http://www.cognitives.com/links.html
http://members.aol.com/peterchg/graphics.html
http://members.aol.com/dogscratch/graphics/backgrounds/index.html
http://members.aol.com/bischo6639/arts/backs.htm
http://www.aimnet.com/~bosman/TextureStation_Lobby.htm
When viewing a background image in your web browser (such as Netscape), right-click on the
image to save it to your disk. Then, switch back to the Composer editor and click on the
Insert pull-down window (located at the top of the screen) and select the Image option.
Next, click on Choose File button (near the top of the new window) and navigate your hard
disk (if necessasry) to locate the image. When you locate the image, click on the image
name and then click on the Open button. Before closing the Image Properties window by
pressing the OK button, click on the Use as background option.
Throughout the document that you are reading, images of portions of the screen are
replicated. You can easily create these images and bring them into the Composer as
follows (assuming that you are using NT or Windows95).
At this point, an entire copy of the captured screen will be loaded into the image editor. Most likely, you will want to use only a portion of this image. Therefore,
Now, you can iconify (reduce) or quit out of the image editor program. Insure that the Composer screen is maximized and:
Inserting Blank Lines After Images
New users may be perplexed by the disappearance of blank lines after images. To insure
that the blank lines that you insert do not disappear, insert a space on each blank line
by pressing the space bar when the cursor is on the blank line. (Note that the Insert
pull-down window located at the top of the screen contains two options, New Line Break and
Break below Images(s), that can be used when attempting to insert blank lines.
Nevertheless, you may find that you will still need to insert a space on each of these
lines in order to retain them.)
Insure that the cursor is blinking at the point where you want the table inserted. Select the Table icon or click on the Insert pull-down menu and select Table.
To readjust a table, right-click anywhere inside the table and select Table
Properties.
Save any changes by pressing the Save button. Then, press the button (or from File
menu, select Browse. A Navigator browser window will open displaying
the page (the Composer window remains open behind it).
Before you publish, you can
check the spelling and correct any mistakes. To check spelling, click the button
depicted above or click on the Tools pull-down menu at the top of the screen
and select Check Spelling.
To Publish your document (ie., copy it to a Web server), press the 
button. This will bring up the
Publish window depicted below. 
The fields entitled HTTP or FTP Location to publish to: specifies
an FTP transfer to the host naples.net. Appended is the path to the directory where
the files will be copied--in this case, /naples.net/somewhere/.
| Note that preferences regarding publishing can be configured by clicking on the Edit pull-down window at the top of the Navigator or Composer window and selecting Publishing (beneath the Composer category) |
|
What to do if a published page appears unchanged: After you publish your
document, you may find that the page appears unchanged when you invoke the Navigator (Web
browser) to see how it looks. This happens because the Navigator determines that the
page has been previously loaded from the network--and to save time and traffic, the
Navigator loads it from cache (a copy stored on your local machine). In this case,
you must force the browser to reload the page from the network instead of your cache in
order to see your published version. Hold the keyboard's SHIFT key
down and click on the Reload button while viewing the desired page.
To create HTML documents with Composer, you do not need to know HTML. But if you do, you can "tweak" things. To view the HTML source code which Composer is creating, select the View pull-down menu at the top of the screen and select Page Source.
Alternatively, you can edit the HTML source of the page you are viewing in Composer by clicking on the Edit pull-down menu at the top of the screen and selecting HTML Source.
You can configure Composer to edit the HTML source in an editor of your own choice
(such as NotePad.) Click on the Edit pull-down menu and select Preferences.
Then, in the frame on the left, click on the plus sign in front of the word Navigator
and select Applications. In the frame on the right, scroll down until
you find Hypertext Markup Language. Highlight it and press the Edit
button on the right. Click on the Application radio button and then
click on Browse button. Locate the editor of your choice (double
clicking on it to fill in the path name).
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Original document prepared by Stephen L. Frazier, Eastern Connecticut State University
Changes or corrections should be sent to IPC
who has modified this page for use on NFN's IPC's Web Site
